


The Breaking

by Beleriandings



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Brothers, Gen, Losgar, Ósanwe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 08:51:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4131544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does it feel like to have half of one's mind ripped away by the roaring flames? Ambarussa found out, that day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Breaking

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the Shibboleth version of the legendarium where Ambarto/Umbarto burns to death at Losgar, and on my own headcanon that the twins shared a strong ósanwe (mind-to-mind) connection.

Once, they had been two halves of one whole, their experiences and feelings entangled, impossible to separate.

The connection between their minds always grew weaker when they argued, but they had never argued like this before.

This, Ambarussa would tell himself later, is why he did not feel what his twin intended to do, did not feel the determination in his brother as he boarded the ship to return. 

He soon felt his brother’s presence once more. But by then it was already too late.

Ambarto was screaming in his head, the creak and pop and whistle of burning timbers filling his ears, panic spiralling through him, and Ambarussa did not know whether the smoke that filled up his nose was truly in the air around him, or was that filling his brother’s lungs, choking his breath away.

It barely mattered. 

The heat, Ambarussa knew, the blistering heat that consumed the other half of his mind, his fëa, would take him too, leave him a burned out husk upon the shore, though he had touched no flame, at least not bodily. 

He was dimly aware that he was screaming, his voice hoarse and his throat raw and stinging, of someone holding his wrists in a firm grip to stop him lashing out with his fists, clawing and scrabbling for air, for life. For his brother. He struggled and fought against the hands that held him, screaming even as he felt his twin slipping away.

There was a great rending feeling, as though he was being torn in two by some giant hands, an inexorable force of nature, and he screamed until he could make no more sound, his voice utterly spent as the flames dyed the world in blood. 

Then, without warning, it was gone. He opened his eyes, and felt the emptiness where his twin had been, for the first time in his life.

He was lying in Maitimo’s arms, he realised, and his eldest brother was looking down at him in concern, slowly relinquishing his grip on Ambarussa’s arms. 

For a moment, all Ambarussa could do was gasp in helpless, weak-limbed shock, his whole world strange and disorientating with that horrible, gaping emptiness where his twin had been.

Maitimo was saying something, gently smoothing back Ambarussa’s hair, tears on his cheeks in the dancing light of the dying flames. 

Ambarussa couldn’t make out his words, his whole world half-unbalanced, tilting dangerously, dizzyingly. 

He felt himself trembling, half beginning to black out, half feeling sick. He pulled violently away from his eldest brother in sudden terror, shoving him roughly. He managed to scramble away only to feel his limbs collapse under him, before he turned around and wretched, his throat sour and burning. He was dimly aware of Maitimo holding his hair away from his face, rubbing small, soothing circles on his back, before collapsing in his brother’s arms once more, weak as a rag doll. 

The emptiness was still there, and even as his vision grew faint, tremors rattling his teeth, breaking across him in cold sweats of shock. As darkness took him he thought, let him be back when I wake. Let this void be healed. Bring him back. Bring us back.

When Ambarussa awoke, many hours later in their camp with his sorrowful brothers grouped around him, he was not surprised to find that the great jagged rip through his heart was still there. 

Now there was only a fearful Void, a great nothingness where his twin had been, threatening to swallow him, always there at his very heels.

His brothers, he supposed, had little concept of the everlasting darkness to which they had sworn themselves, even now. They probably thought they could picture it. But he knew that they couldn’t, not truly.

They had never had half of their mind forcibly torn away, they had never been half of a being made of two spirits intertwined beyond untangling, forcibly ripped apart. Of course they could not imagine the hole left behind.

But now he could.


End file.
